Sometimes one thinks he/she knows a certain subject, then suddenly finds the mental rug pulled out! Which recently happened to me…
FDR (and wife Eleanor), the latter so crucial to his astonishing career? Of course I’d previously read some on them, but mea culpa: I had this couple categorized and pigeon-holed, and wrongly!
Till I watched a PBS “American Experience” program on them, a true gem; and as in Johnny Cash’s iconic “Boy Named Sue,” ended up with a different point of view. What I found was that FDR’s amazing climb to the Oval Office was anything but foreordained. For he’d started out as a patrician man about town, and one lacking empathy for his wife as she bore him six kids. Into the bargain he had a love affair behind her back, and just seemed, well, charming … and superficial.
As for Eleanor, she became depressed by the marriage, even at one point wanting to leave. But then came FDR’s polio, and paradoxically, this terrible scourge MADE them both! Eleanor had to step up and work hard on his seemingly shattered political career, and he learned to care about suffering in the land, given the terrible cross he now had to bear. Laboriously overcoming the fact that he really couldn’t walk, FDR became, and amazingly, a popular, multi-term president, and in the midst of a challenging Depression, then world war.
So why do I liken this celebrated Dem to Donald Trump? Because both were outliers who improbably made it to the White House, then shattered conventional wisdom and prior certitudes by their novel views and policies. Both weren’t at all fond of waiting – some problem to work on? Do it now, not later…
Both had to grapple with the courts, if in Trump’s case, much more than FDR’s. But the Donald has also had to endure huge dollops of media opprobrium and Deep State machinations, far more again than Roosevelt ever did; and with an opposition party hardly willing to work with him at all, no matter what he proposes.
Trump’s had such trammels that his own form of a “New Deal” would have been 500 times more pronounced had his opponents (again, including numerous lawyers and justices) not kept putting figurative sticks in his wheels.
But what’s not to approve when he recently had smugglers’ boats full of drugs like fentanyl blown up, the latter substance right up with the big “h” and inflicting great damage on generations of our future? By contrast, supine Joe scarcely gave a rip about that grave problem.
Not to mention his formerly porous southern border! What’s not to like about making it a real one? Or of trying to reduce staggering murder rates in Chicago or D.C.?
What’s not to appreciate, too, in Trump’s appointment of the stellar specialist Dr. Marty Makary, now scrutinizing TV medical ads re their lack of warnings about side effects, etc.? Or in the current admin trying to get very flush Ivy League colleges off the government dole, using taxpayers’ millions they don’t fully deserve, given their recent history of tilting mainly one way on the ideological spectrum? Or in Trump’s B-2’s blowing up Iranian nuclear installations, and giving Israel carte blanche in that regard, too?
All this may not be your cup of tea, as Roosevelt’s New Deal reforms weren’t to those preaching minimal government intervention. Or as his subsequent plunge into war via aid to beleaguered Great Britain, then his response to Pearl Harbor wasn’t to American isolationists.
It’s said, however, and with some truth, that those who haven’t made enemies haven’t done much in life! Well FDR made plenty with his forthright U-turn from prior policies under Pres. Hoover. Trump? He’s of course gathered MANY more than Roosevelt ever did! A huge amount, foaming at the mouth with endless, vituperative loathing of anything and everything he does.
Of course most managed to take the anti-Covid jabs Trump’s solid support and erasure of cloying regulations helped make a rapid success for companies like Pfizer.
In conclusion, I realize I won’t persuade everyone with this comparison! But I still admire both FDR and Trump, each becoming presidents at parlous moments in American history, ones requiring and getting bold new ideas … and truly forthright leadership!